Industry Will Produce More Quality Metrics - ing the state laws and regulations governing senior living. These standards help demonstrate the industry’s commitment to excellence in consumer and resident rights, quality improvement, workforce practices, and regulatory compliance. Argentum is continuing to gather insights from internal and external partners to expand on the Phase 1 standards and identify more comprehensive quality standards for Phase 2 and beyond. For more information about Argentum’s Standards for Senior Living, visit argentum.org/standards.

Discern Health helps organizations enhance the value of health care services through quali- ty-based payment and delivery models. Establishing metrics has long been a goal of the senior living industry—and it’s a goal that’s even more pronounced as senior living providers seek to establish partnerships with health care organizations to improve outcomes, while also maintaining its successful social model desired by consumers. “The connection between senior liv- ing and health care is likely to grow over the next several decades,” notes D’Andrea. “For health care organizations, a lot of their success is going to be tied to metrics for how successful they are in helping patients and residents stay healthy.” Many of those issues are dependent upon how healthy these individuals are at home, he adds. “Lifestyle and life choices and social context really drive a lot of health-care behavior.” D’Andrea points to a “tremendous opportunity to work with [aging] populations to help them get the care they need where they live, to manage lifestyles in a way that produces better health.” Over the past 15 years, health care providers have focused

Approximately 2,000 senior living communities have attested to Argentum Phase 1 standards.

a great deal on metrics and accountability. “There have been   what it means to be a high-performing health care provider,” such as low infection rates, people staying healthier longer, or good outcomes for complex surgeries. This measurement and accountability in health care creates an opportunity for alignment between health care systems and senior living, says D’Andrea. “The convergence of those trends suggests that senior living operators will be asked to produce some of the same kinds of metrics that health care organizations are being asked to pro- duce.” Those metrics may suggest how senior living and health care organizations can form partnerships in the future.

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Getting senior living providers on board will be essential, including encouraging providers to build the infrastructure to collect the necessary data. “Over time, I think there will be some goal to choose standardized metrics and report them in a standardized way,” D’Andrea says. “That supports the goal to make meaningful comparisons to support decision making by consumers and other partners.” But standardized metrics should not be confused with unifor- mity in consumer options. “You want to be careful to allow the  We wouldn’t want to create a system to limit those options. The market should be adaptable to what people need. Argentum’s goal would be to allow members to be innovative to serve cus- tomers, while also being able to demonstrate a commitment to quality and value and to be able to show how they deliver that.”